


Devotion

by Cybertronic Purgatory (orphan_account)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Casual Sex, F/F, Femslash, Rough Sex, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Cybertronic%20Purgatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spanning events from Therum up until the very end, it charts the blossoming relationship between Shepard and Tali'Zorah – the false starts, the losses; the simple beginnings, the complicated continuations and the painful and bloody ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**I.**

 

One of the first things Shepard teaches Tali'Zorah is raw desire. It is an indirect lesson, delivered at what Tali normally calls an inappropriate time, but it strikes her with such ferocity that it alters the course of her entire life. She feels it even then, the slight change happening, the destiny altered, all because she experiences the tug of absolute carnal desire pulling at her.

 

On Therum, the Commander pushes the Mako too hard and suddenly it halts to an abrupt stop, refusing to move no matter how much she coaxes and strokes the dashboard. Caught in a narrow valley covered in red dust and lined with polished rock walls, Tali lays on her back as she works on fixing the broken propulsion. Small stones jut out of the dirt blanketing the ground, digging into her back. She moves with care, aware that they are sharp enough to cause a rupture if she snags her suit on one.

 

Shepard keeps peeking in, wisps of dark hair loosened from the bun and hanging in front of her face as she asks if she can assist. 

 

“Not after what you did to your omni-tool.” Tali gives a gentle kick to shove her away, the flat of her foot pushing against the hard padding covering Shepard's shin.

 

“Hey, that was a design flaw.” Shepard gives a slight kick, ankle to ankle, then shields her eyes and looks off into the distance. “Chief, do you see what I see?”

 

To her right, Williams fires her sniper rifle, the low boom followed by a cheerful laugh. “Perfect headshot!”

 

“Don't get cocky,” Shepard replies, taking her own sniper rifle as they stand side by side. Just from listening Tali can guess which one of them doesn't respect the cool-down cycle of their gun, and more than once she hears a low swear as Shepard fires too soon and causes an overheat.

 

Williams snorts. “Biotics.”

 

“Careful, Ash.”

 

“I'm sure you'll get to impress us in less open terrain.”

 

They banter back and forth as they scan the perimeter, circling around the Mako, but there are no more hostiles in the vicinity. Tali continues working undisturbed, maintaing a better focus with no gunfire to distract her.

 

She has her doubts about what she is even doing there, though she knew the minute she got her hands on that vital piece of information that she was on a path leading into dangerous territory, yet it is far beyond what she could have dreamed up. The worlds they visit, the starship she temporarily lives on, they all seem like figments of her imagination. The Normandy is big and silent, and the humans look at her with curiosity and respect. It's strange to not be met by resentment: she was ready to argue until her voice was hoarse to be brought along, but Shepard was the one who wanted her there.

 

The galaxy isn't quite the horrible place she was told to expect.

 

Screwing the panel back in place she slides out. “It's done.” As she looks up she is met with Shepard blocking out the harsh sunlight. Sweat drips down the front of her chest, over the toned muscles and down, past where the fabric of the rolled-down suit begins. As she is pulled up on her feet and given a pat on the back, a peculiar shiver passes through her.

 

She's no stranger to desire, the undeniable tug and pull, but what stirs is so intense that she feels the pounding blood rushing in her veins. It grows to become a fever, the image rising up at the least welcome moments. As she stands around talking technicalities with Shepard who scratches her belly without thought, the little glimpse of skin is enough to derail Tali for a few seconds before she can go on.

 

It's just a stomach. Just a memory of a trail of sweat moving downwards.

 

She pushes the image away with a stubborn determination and moves on, but sometimes she freezes just a little when Shepard touches her. Sometimes she lingers a little too long and she feels ashamed and embarrassed, talking too much about things that don't matter, trying to cover herself up. Shepard just raises her eyebrow a little, the one with a scar slicing right through it, but asks nothing more.

 

 

 

**II.**

 

A credit chit with an unholy sum appears in her locker, taped to inside with a note from Shepard. ' _Sorry, I know Alliance freelance pay isn't the best. Adams said he'd file a complaint to have yours upped to engineering consultant._ ' Tali does not know what to do, sending half to the Flotilla and getting a message back from Shala'Raan urging her to enjoy herself a little. When she decides what to spend it on – because the hours are lonely and the dull hours are many – she suspects it is what Shala'Raan meant.

 

The first time she tries to go into the store the turian shopkeeper chases her away. She curses him but is pushed out onto the street despite her efforts. A few levels down in the Wards she finds a shop where no one turns her away, but they overcharge her for an outdated upgrade. Finding some time alone to install it is harder, but when she does she leans back and suddenly all the effort feels worth it. The stimulation program moves like breaths across her skin and then suddenly it is a fingertip. She adjusts the sensation, flicking between different species until the touch is uniquely human. The soft pads press and stroke, and she bites her tongue, arching slightly as the program focuses its attention on her breasts.

 

She imagines that it's Shepard touching her thighs, _fingers splayed wide, moving higher and higher until they brush agains_ t... A final shudder cuts her off, but in the few minutes it takes her heartbeat to slow down again she considers the thought, not concerned about the consequences, floating in the bliss of pure pleasure.

 

Afterwards she feels ashamed and deletes the program, shaking it off as a delirious fantasy. Still, she catches herself looking a bit too hard at Shepard, at the thin strip of exposed skin between her suit and hairline, wondering what it'd feel like to touch. Re-installing the program, she sets it to re-create the sensation of touching human hair as she strokes the back of a seat. It's... Different. Soft and tickling on the downstroke, coarse and rough on the upstroke.

 

 

 

**III.**

 

Curiosity is hard to sate, and there's time aplenty on the Normandy. The Tantalus Core handles flawlessly and only rarely does Garrus need help fixing the Mako, no matter how Shepard handles it. The lower deck is slow, nothing happening, and people begin leaving until there's just two of them left. 

 

She stands in front of Wrex, arms crossed, for several minutes before he blinks and grins. “You were sleeping,” she says.

 

“What else is there to do?” Wrex rolls his head from side to side. “You should try it. Save some energy for the real fighting.”

 

“Some of us have to keep the ship functional.”

 

“Glad that's not my job then.” He laughs his slow, menacing laugh and leaves her alone in the cargo bay.

 

Normally she is not keen on solitude, but her mood as of late has necessitated a need for it. She pulls up a chair to the desk and gets to work sating the curiosity gnawing madly at her.

 

She searches the extranet for vids and find plenty. With one glance over her shoulder to make sure she's alone, she hits play and her breath hitches a little. The clothes gone, human females look just as vulnerable as quarians, but a bit softer, curvier. The hands move down, tracing across a stomach less muscled than Shepard's, parting the thighs. She feels hot as the camera zooms in and the fingers move across brightly pink folds. _I could do that_ , she thinks and realizes the implication. Still she watches it to the end, and then she watches another and yet another. 

 

She can't peel her eyes away, crossing her legs as she leans closer. There are subtle differences that she notes, but they are so small, so negligent. In the next vid, they are two, smiling at each other as one kisses a path down the chest, tongue circling as it dips lower. The other woman throws her head back and fists the sheets, rising up until she's only touching the bed with her toes and shoulders, thighs quivering.

 

“You're up late,” comments a voice right behind her. She jumps and tries to close the vid but a hand holds her still. Shepard's voice is low and amused. “Interesting night watching.”

 

“I...” All she wants is to melt through the floor, to vanish into thin air, but Shepard chuckles.

 

“Press play.”

 

Hesitating, she turns around to look at Shepard. The smile is hard to decipher, but she un-pauses and lets it play to the end. Now and then she steals a glance at Shepard, her full lips twitching with a smile. All the while, her hand is still on top, their fingers touching.

 

“Is that something you like?” Shepard asks when it's finished. Then she squeezes Tali's hand, shakes her head. “You don't have to answer that, I'm being too curious. Forget it.”

 

After a night of no sleep, of thinking that's risking too much – respect, a budding friendship, distracting from the mission – she is too sleep-deprived to do anything but act on it. In the cargo bay Shepard and Williams are preparing for a drop onto the planet below, changing into their combat suits with little care for modesty. Despite that, all Tali sees is the the scar going right through Shepard's eyebrow. The scar tissue itself wrinkles whenever the eyebrow moves, which it does when she has a question on the tip of her tongue.

 

Tali's presence causes the eyebrow to rise, and she can answer without needing to have it uttered. “Yes,” she says, a simple word, carrying so much weight. She smiles behind her visor, repeats it as Shepard stands dumbfounded. “Yes.”

 

Shepard smiles. “I'll keep that in mind.”

 

What she really wants to do then and there is pull on the silver chain around her neck, pull her so close she can feel the heat of her body through the suit, feel the muscles and flesh against her.  What she does is nod and leave, her step light.

 

 

 

**IV.**

 

Days pass after the revelation and there's a look here and there, meaningful probably, but Tali is not good at deciphering human facial expressions. She goes on, pretending not to think too much of it but her head is racing. Did Shepard regret it? Did she pull out? Has something changed her mind, or did Tali simply misinterpret her words?

 

One evening as she comes up from the engineering deck she finds Shepard alone in the mess hall, everyone elsewhere or asleep. With her foot she pushes out a chair, telling Tali to come sit and talk.

 

“So how would this work?”

 

“Would what work?” Tali asks dryly.

 

“Sex. You, me, doing it.” She scratches the back of her neck. “I mean, I like the idea, but I'm not sure how you see it happening, with your suit and immune system.”

 

Tali stutters, not prepared for such frankness. “There's ways...”

 

“Exactly, but what do you see us doing?”

 

“I...” Tali lets out a small wail, unable to put together her words as she puts her head down on the table and covers it with her arms. “I can't believe I'm having this conversation.”

 

Shepard strokes her arm, though she sounds amused. “Better to have this talk before I overstep even worse. I'm good at that.”

 

Tali looks up. “Have you ever...”

 

“Yes.”

 

“... With a quarian?”

 

“No.”

 

She lowers her head again, too embarrassed to see Shepard's expression as she outlines the ideas she has, convinced they will be enough to scare her away, too outrageous or kinky or perhaps even taboo in human sexuality. So in the belief that everything she is saying is serving to push Shepard out of her reach forever, she lets it all pour out, every little fantasy or possibility she can think of. When she finishes, she is ready. She has laid herself and her intentions bare, and it is entirely Shepard's move – a move she expects to be withdrawal, horrified at what desires are harbored in a young quarian pilgrim bouncing her feet in nervousness under the table.

 

All she gets is one question. “So you'd rather not take your suit off, is what I'm gathering?” She doesn't look angry, just thoughtful. There's even a glimmer in her eyes.

 

“I'd prefer to keep it on.”

 

“That's fine with me.” She reaches out across the table and interlaces her fingers with Tali's. “It's all fine with me. I'll get working on making it happen.”

 

“Really?” Tali can't hide the surprise, her voice rising unexpectedly.

 

“Really.” Shepard's wide smile reveals the gap between her front teeth. “Sorry it took me a few days. I'm breaking a personal rule, and I needed to ask myself if I found this worth it. Found you worth it. I do.”

 

“What's the rule?”

 

“Don't shit where you eat.”

 

“That's... Disgusting.” Tali can’t help but smile a little.

 

“It means, don't get involved with people you work with.”

 

 

 

**V.**

 

She finds a gift in her locker the next time she pulls out her shotgun to come along for a bumpy Mako ride. An OCD with a superior suit application loaded onto it – she scans it in and installs, and a minute into the fray with geth she has to disable it, each sense overwhelmed. She feels each little breeze ruffling the billowing green fields of grass, and the leaves of grass themselves under her feet, the sharp sides tickling her skin; she feels the way Shepard pulls her down into cover as if Shepard was touching her skin directly, and it all leaves her head rushing.

 

Not until they get back to the Normandy does she enable it again and march right into Shepard's room where she is toweling off after a shower, wet hair slicked to her back. Tali takes her time, touching each slip of dark skin as Shepard reclines on the bed, her body tense.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“No,” Shepard pushes out between gritted teeth as Tali moves one edge of the towel to the side, revealing the smooth curve of a bare breast, the nipple hardening as she circles a finger around it. The touch, the sound, the improved scent all come together to create a heady sensation for Tali and it deepens when she realizes the power in mere touch. A little flick of the finger against the right spot and Shepard throws her head back, fisting the sheets by her head. A stroke and she moans. She marvels at the ease with which she turns the harsh Commander into a gibbering mess covered in sweat and repeating her name over and over.

 

“I like the way you say it,” Tali muses as Shepard kisses her from shoulder to fingers, the soft and flexible tongue wrapping around her long digits in an apparent celebration of what they can do. “My name. Your accent hitches in my translator.”

 

“Tali,” Shepard says, laughing a little as she repeats it, dragging the vowels out. A little later, she is crying the name, chanting it as a plea, and Tali is more than happy to comply.

 

Thus the second thing Shepard teaches her is power, something Tali never felt she possessed.

 

On the Flotilla she was the crafty kid with average academic performance and a potential that went unfulfilled. She preferred her attempts at impressing father after mother died, trying to peel him away from his secretive project vessels. Even when he was with her in body, his mind was elsewhere, and she knew that the little trinket or rig she showed off to him did little to impress him. Shala'Raan tried to make up for lost parental affection, especially after her own son died. Tali still felt like she was very much no-one: easily forgotten and overlooked, non-essential, uninteresting. She spent her time repairing engines and dreaming about her Pilgrimage drawing closer, preparing through reading everything she could get her hands about the world outside her insular bubble.

 

There were two guides for the Pilgrimage. The official one was updated every three years with various cautions and concerns, intent to prepare the young quarians of what awaited them in the galaxy. Simple, bare-bones, incredibly dull.

 

The unofficial guide was updated far more frequently, a digital copy passed around but rarely spoken of. It detailed planets, both the good and bad, attaching addresses and places that welcomed quarians and ones that didn't. There were entire essays for and against indentured servitude on Illium, what might be considered a decent gift to bring back to the Flotilla, how to deal with various races... In all manner of ways. It included extensive lists of how to 'interact intimately' without taking off one's suit, and Tali, given the go-ahead from Shepard to inform her of anything she thought might be a necessary acquisition, forwards a selection of the list. Partially to test the waters, still convinced Shepard is one slip of the tongue from backing out.

 

She doesn't. Instead, Shepard delivers. Everything she purchases is high-quality: toys in various materials and shapes, perfectly suited for Shepard's anatomy. Tali inspects them one by one, taking her time to pick and chose. The mask gives her one advantage in that Shepard can't read her face, leaving her at a mercy of curiosity and apprehension, a heady mix. Delaying the pleasure little by little, until Shepard let out a wordless noise.

 

Power, a rush Tali never felt before, turns out to be just what she wants. She can give Shepard untold highs, make her bite her own lip so hard it bruises, cause her to blush just as the mere motion of a finger as they finish a mission. She quickly realizes that Shepard is under her sway, surrendering body and desires to Tali. Instead of being taken aback she delights in it and finds her own satisfaction in it.

 

Ordering Shepard to touch her thrills Tali more than she likes to admit, to see the Commander on all fours on the floor as Tali spreads her thighs and the demand does not even need to be spoken. With the sensitivity of her suit nerve stimulation turned up, she can feel as Shepard presses her lips against Tali, moving further and further until Tali gasps. It's close, so close, not quite but it's more than enough. She grabs Shepard's hair and thrusts her hips against those lips. She comes, a subdued and muted orgasm, and she is almost disappointed enough to tear off her suit and press her naked body to Shepard's.

 

She decides against it. The mission they are on is unsure, each day revealing a new twist in the road. Falling sick is not productive. Instead she drags Shepard by her hair over to the table and pushes her down on it, one arm between her shoulder-blades as her hand moves between the thighs.

 

 

 

**VI.**

 

They keep at it, late-night meetings in the sound-proofed cabin, Tali in charge. She is the one who decides when, she is the one who makes the choice of what to do. Shepard smiles and does as she is told, willing and eager to let Tali explore herself through another's body, discovering what she likes. Early on, she learns that she loves the way Shepard smiles and stretches as she floats down from an orgasm, how her muscles become soft and her knees give way when Tali makes her stand up as she places a vibrator between the labia. Everything about Shepard is charming, and it's disarming to see the Commander naked and flushed so often.

 

Tali cannot help but ask, as she holds Shepard's hands above her head and secure them to the bed with a strong rope. “Do you really like this?”

 

“Yes. Don't you?”

 

“I do, but I worry... It's all just me, and nothing about you.”

 

“It's plenty of _us_.”

 

Tali picks up the strap-on, adjusting the harness in full view of Shepard who tries to press her legs together but can't, her ankles bound to the bed-frame as well. Touching the tip of the latex dildo, she runs her hand up and down the rubbery surface. “Is this what human dicks look like?”

 

“Not really,” Shepard says, slightly impatient. “Not that I would know.”

 

“You don't like men?”

 

“I haven't been with any human males.”

 

“Not what you're into?”

 

“I'm into _people_ ,” she says with emphasis. “I like personalities.”

 

“I'm as boring as they come,” Tali jokes, but Shepard shakes her head.

 

“You're more vibrant than you think.”

 

Tali straddles Shepard's hips and gags her with a piece of cloth. “That's enough talk for now.” As she finds room between Shepard's legs she does the only thing she can do, stroke and touch, tease and rub with her fingers until Shepard is frustrated enough to glare daggers at her. Tali grins behind the mask, sliding the dildo against the labia until the wet lips spread from the pressure. She keeps one thumb on the clit as she presses the tip against her entrance, watching it disappear inside little by little.

 

Beneath her, Shepard writhes and groans into the gag, pulling the ropes taut as she tries to move her hips. Tali continues to take it slow until she is fully inside, and there she waits, patient, until a  sheen of sweat covers Shepard. Her chest is rising and falling with short breaths, and her eyes are half-lidded. A muffled moan is uttered when Tali pulls out a little before pushing in again, and though Tali struggles to keep the rhythm even, Shepard seems to enjoy it.

 

After a few minutes of thrusting, Tali feels her back aching and she lowers herself on top of Shepard. The skin is slick and hair is plastered to her forehead, and Tali strokes it away. Shepard looks up at her, half-there and half-not, and Tali suddenly gets an urge to kiss her. She grunts and slams into Shepard instead, who manages to dislodge the gag with her tongue. Instead of speaking though she reaches her mouth up and peppers Tali's neck with little kisses in-between moaning outright, the noise reverberating into Tali's throat.

 

Even Tali shudders from a strange sort of climax as Shepard comes.

 

As she unties Shepard, Tali says, “it's just a thing,” not wanting to promise her future to the rash Commander who takes charging krogans headfirst without flinching. She repeats, remembering how Shepard shot a man in the face when he threatened her with mere words – “it's nothing serious”.

 

“It's whatever you want it to be,” Shepard assures her, handing over even more power to Tali. For a few days, each time she leaves the captain's cabin she ponders the meaning of the statement, wonders if there is not a hidden meaning underneath. Then the thought dissolves as Virmire shakes the Normandy crew.

 

 

 

**VII.**

 

Shepard remains stoic in front of her subordinates, calm and collected as she goes about their daily affairs. Yet the first night Tali comes to the cabin, Shepard shakes her head and explains about her period, the bleeding and pain and how it hurts. She tells Tali that it'll be over in five days, but, as Tali notes, she does not say ' _come then_ '. It makes her hesitate as the day cycles continue on, and she feels the need rising in herself.

 

With an overzealous dedication, Shepard flings herself at any assignment she can take, scouring the remote systems for signs of geth that she eradicates with a brutal dedication. Tali comes along and relays any coordinates of the slaughter left in their wake to her father, keeping in mind how little she has done towards giving him the geth parts he wants. The sight of so many geth, torn to pieces by Shepard's biotic attacks, sobers her up. She has neglected her duty towards father, and as penance sends him whatever she can.

 

He sends a note, reading only ' _I was wondering if you had fallen ill when no deliveries came_ ' and she works even harder to recover intact, perfect pieces, but he never explicitly thanks her. It’s an ungrateful job being his daughter, she thinks, and immediately regrets it.

 

After a long and arduous journey through the Armstrong nebula, they step inside what appears to be the final base for the geth incursion in the system. Barely has Tali gotten her bearings in the cramped space than she is knocked down by a hit that her shields only just manage to absorb. The impact knocks all air out of her and she gasps, only able to watch as Shepard flares an electric blue and unleashes a storm of crackling energy.

 

For a minute, all she sees is the blur of blue, feels the tug as the centre of gravity in the room is shifted. In the hands of Shepard, space bends just a little, and the static noises of the geth sound almost desperate.

 

When the last one falls, an eerie song comes in a sudden and short burst. It is a quarian lament, one Tali has not heard since she was young – a song her mother used to sing. The melodic accent is strange, and three hundred years has changed the way quarians speak, but she can make out one line: _and when I come home, the desert kisses me welcome_. As abruptly as it fills the silence, as soon it is gone again. Shepard is already in another room, and Garrus helps pick Tali up off the ground. He gives her a harsh pat on the back, and she punches his arm.

 

When Shepard comes out from the inner room, she brings with her an OSD disk that she throws to Tali. “Take a copy, but I need the original back.”

 

She copies the information she understands the enormity of the gift she has been given. If she wished, she could end her pilgrimage right then and there, head back and join whichever crew she desires. Though tempting to leave, particularly with Shepard in such a harsh mood, she stays because she needs to see it through to the end.

 

 

 

**VIII.**

 

She wants to do something for Shepard, whose pain becomes obvious to Tali yet everyone else seems to think she is coping well over the loss of Alenko. Tali realizes it's due to all the times she has observed that body, to figure out when she is pushing it hard enough or being too gentle. She sees it in the cheeks, the way the jaw is pushed out, the way she holds herself: as if she was carrying an empire on her shoulders. As the cold air of Noveria makes both Tali and Liara rub their arms to keep warm, Shepard shrugs even though the skin at the back of her neck prickles. She puts the lethal shot in Benezia, right in the stomach, and can't even look at the matriarch as she dies nor at Liara as she cries in the tram back. Tali tries her best to comfort Liara, awkwardly hugging her, but even she is at a loss on what to say. She tries to imagine, tries to relate, but instead chokes on the words.

 

Though it seems Shepard can keep up the cool distance forever… And then they return to the Citadel and the Normandy is grounded. Shepard storms back onto the ship in a furious rage, a biotic glow surrounding her body as she paces in the mess hall.

 

Unable to keep away from the suffering, Tali draws near, one hand raised to show she means no harm. “Shepard, are you alright?”

 

Shepard spins around, wild eyes lined with dark circles, her lips dry and cracking, and leans close to whisper: “Fuck me until I can't think. Please.”

 

It's wild and raw, pushing and pulling, almost like a fight as they tumble into the cabin. Shepard's clothes come off, the hems tear a bit under their clumsy fingers, and welts rise up on her back as Tali rakes her gloved fingers across them. She pushes Shepard onto the desk, spreading her legs further apart with kicks harsh enough to cause bruises. One hand on her neck, she pushes the dildo inside in one smooth move while Shepard's near scream dissolves into a frustrated moan.

 

She slams Shepard into the desk, pulling at her hair with one hand and using the other to reach around and circle the clit with harsh moves. Shepard screams, her sweaty palms knocking papers and data-pads off the table, and her back arches and shifts. When her legs give way and she slides down onto the floor Tali follows, thrusting into her despite how her hips ache. She feels a kind of tension building up in herself, a knot of threads tangling more and more and then coming undone as she tenses up and collapses on top of Shepard.

 

“Commander?” Joker's voice on the intercom. “I'm, uh, I know you're busy but Anderson wants to meet you at Flux.”

 

“Got it,” Shepard grunts, struggling with the words.

 

Tali is too exhausted to move. Below her, Shepard breathes a little, her chest shaking with a relieved laugh. “I take it you liked it,” she says with an exhausted sigh.

 

“Mind-shattering.” She remains on the floor with Tali for a little longer then eases out from under her, stroking Tali's back. “You can stay here and rest a bit if you want.”

 

Tali is too tired to protest as she is helped into the bed, Shepard undoing the strap-on harness and covering Tali with a blanket. Though sleepy, she watches Shepard dress, the sinuous body shimmying into an officer's outfit. Her legs still shake a bit, and Tali smiles as she dozes off, vaguely aware of the kiss pressed to the top of her head.

 

 

 

**IX.**

 

When she next wakes up, the engine hums with the tell-tale sign of FTL travel. Sneaking back down to engineering, she is met with an excited and nervous atmosphere. The impact of the crime makes Tali tremble slightly, knowing that she would be executed in the Flotilla for what they are doing.

 

Yet she has no doubts about where she wants to be: she is with Shepard to the very end of the galaxy. She is as ready as she can be, checking her shotgun with Ashley and adding a few modifications as they work together in silence. Wrex comes over, a lazy walk, pushing them aside as he shows them how to make a shotgun have that 'extra kick' as he puts it. It weighs a bit more than she is used to when he is done, but she thanks him nonetheless. His neck shakes with a rumbling laugh as he warns her about the recoil. “Might dislocate an arm if you're careless, but that's all part of the thrill.”

 

With Garrus she goes over the Mako, seeing if they can make any last-minute improvements with the limited supplies they carry. He manages to fine-tune the cannon while she adjusts the motion dampener – a little thing, but enough to offset the worst of Shepard's driving.

 

The hours tick by and she keeps busy. Slowly the open areas empty as people withdraw to catch some last-minute sleep, but she is too nervous. There is always something to do, a new algorithm to run to streamline a process down half a second, and she keeps going even as Adams asks if she doesn't want to rest up a little.

 

It's not until a familiar arm snakes around her waist that she stops and leans back. “Come on,” Shepard mutters. “Get some rest with me.”

 

To her grateful surprise, they do just rest. Her nerves are too tight-strung to take the idea of sex, and the idea that if she comes apart in bed she'll fly apart completely haunts her, terrifying. Together they curl up in the wide bed, Shepard with one arm flung over Tali's side as she presses close, face against the back of her neck. They talk a little, of inconsequential things, of important things. They joke and smile and Tali rolls around, curling up against Shepard's chest, one of her legs nested between Shepard's. It’s almost blissful, if not for the impending doom hanging over their heads.

 

 

 

**X.**

 

She runs on pure adrenaline for hours as they land on the ancient world. The geth resistance is heavy but she feels barely any fear, just the thunder of pulse as they rush onwards. Through the archives on Ilos and the long trenches following the water's flow, she is on the edge of her seat as she takes aim to shoot. As Shepard races past the massive geth colossi, she keeps an eye on the energy read-outs from the miniature relay. They make it with barely a second to spare, crashing out onto the Citadel and landing upside down.

 

Shepard is the first to crawl out and immediately she calls for Tali and Wrex to hurry, a shrill metallic noise and familiar sighed groan outside. Tali barely has time to slow her pulse in the elevator before it jams and Shepard shoots out the glass window, taking a step out before the mag-boots attach her to the tower exterior. As she adjusts her perspective, she looks up towards the top of the tower. The massive arms of Sovereign move and shake the entire structure. It's not long before they run into more geth, more barricades, but they push through. The processes of her suit and omni-tool are over-clocked to the point of shorting out, but she stays in the fight somehow. A little miracle among many, luck on their side.

 

It's only when a throwaway piece of Sovereign falls through the window and Wrex covers her with his massive body from the falling debris that she thinks luck has drained out. Her entire body aches, her head is pounding, her hands shaking. Wrex disengages her stiff fingers from the shotgun she is clutching to her chest, checking her for damage, but he says nothing. They both saw what fell on Shepard.

 

Her head reels as they try to shift the blocks of concrete and destroyed Reaper, but nothing budges. Wrex winces when he moves his arm, and she thinks she's broken a rib. They wait, but not for long. Anderson comes and pulls them out, and she is the one who shakes her head when he asks where the Commander is. She can't believe it either. A C-Sec officer slides his arm around her and helps her to limp towards the elevator, when she hears a rustle and turns around, expecting to see nothing.

 

Instead she sees Shepard, triumphant as she climbs across broken pillars, holding her arm at an awkward angle but with a smile on her face that defies death. The relief washes over Tali, intense and gratifying, and mindful of the ache in her leg she half-jumps, half-runs to Shepard and flings her arm around her. It hurts them both as they hug, but neither of them care.

 

It's the last time they touch before Tali leaves for the Flotilla. Shepard is engaged in important meetings and debriefings as Tali rests up in a sterilized hospital room specially dedicated for quarian usage. When she feels good enough, she is invited to a party where the Normandy crew are the guests of honor.

 

Upon arriving there, she stands out: everyone else is wearing official suits or long flowing gowns, and she is in her old and worn environmental suit. In the far distance of the room she sees Shepard, hair let down over her back and a glass in hand. She is strikingly beautiful, and Tali aches at the idea of saying goodbye. Making her rounds between the other crew members she says the terrible word over and over, but she keeps away from Shepard, conscious that she has no idea what to say. ' _Thank you_ ' seems so inadequate.

 

Her plan to sneak out unnoticed is foiled when she is intercepted in the lobby. “Heard you were leaving,” Shepard says, arms crossed, little bumps rising on her naked skin.

 

“I didn't want to disturb you.”

 

“These diplomats never know when to stop talking.” She tilted her head to one side. “You're unhappy.”

 

“I have to go back home, to the Flotilla,” Tali says. “What we have... It's been amazing. More than that. But I have...” She knows it was just temporary, just a stress release thing for both them even while it was an experience for Tali the likes of which she doubts she will ever have again. Yet she has to leave, and she assumed it would be easier because there were no firm words or promises between them. It hurts, though. It hurts so bad.

 

“It's okay. I got it. Tomorrow I have to pull my entire crew in from shore leave and head out into the Terminus again. Duty calls. Maybe I'll see you around in the galaxy.”

 

“It's a big one, but yes. I hope we do.”

 

“Have a good life, Tali'Zorah. And good luck.” Shepard smiles, eyes downcast, and she turns to go back into the party.

 

“Thank you, Shepard.” It's all Tali can say, and it is indeed inadequate. They part so simply, so easily, and all the way back to the Flotilla, hitching rides and spending the last of her credits paid by the Alliance on tickets, she replays the moment in her mind. No better words pop up, no better way comes to mind. It had to be done, there are no hard feelings, and yet...

 

She reminds herself that her loyalties ultimately lie elsewhere, and she reasons that her father would hate Shepard anyway. The Commander isn't exactly a girlfriend to bring home and show off. Shepard might even resent such a role, or just not care. Though she came so close to Shepard, she reasons that she has not learnt anything at all about her. That she is just as elusive and legendary as the news cycle is making her out to appear, even when one is fucking her into the mattress and making her shout one's name.


	2. Chapter 2

**I.**

 

The news reach Tali just after she is accepted onboard the Neema. First she stares in disbelief at the short message from Alliance command, thinking that it's an error, an automated message sent due to a server hiccup. The news breaks, it's confirmed, survivors are interviewed, and she still doesn't believe it.

 

It's not until Rael'Zorah takes time off his work to talk to her that it sinks in. He asks her if she met any interesting people and she tells him about Shepard, goes on for minutes about the amazing Commander and everything she opened up for Tali, a vastness of possibilities, of bravery, of acceptance. “She is the greatest human I have ever met.”

 

“She was,” Rael corrects, then pauses as he sees his daughter's distressed body language. “The reports stated she died. I thought it was the same same Shepard, of the Normandy?”

 

“Yes.” Tali closes her eyes, her throat constricting. “Yes, father.”

 

“Shame. Were you two friends?”

 

“Yes. We were close.”

 

He reaches out and touches her, a stiff pat, cold and emotionless. “You'll get over it.”

 

 _Get over what?_ she thinks, at first sadly, then with an acidic undertone. Get over the injustice of Shepard dying, of her body disappearing, of her name briefly hailed and then dragged in the dirt? She seethes with the frustration that she has no right to take up what Shepard's death left to accomplish, and she rages in silence each day.

 

 _Get over it_. Eventually it becomes something she repeats to herself, frustrated with how haywire she feels, all her emotions just a stray thought away from bubbling up. All the lost chances, all the words left unspoken, and all they _did_ have together. It circles in her mind, growing into a weight around her neck that chokes her even when she finds time alone to repeat the mantra. _Get over it_.

 

She tries, she does. With the historian on the Neema, thinking the abrupt difference will make her forget. She remembers nonetheless. She tries again, with several marines, drawn to the way they move, to the way they talk and laugh, but it's not the same. She tries, again and again, but breaks it off as soon as it begins. It's not until Kal'Reegar touches her hand and she recoils, unthinking, that she knows that it is a futile effort.

 

“It's not you,” she assures him. “It's just someone else.”

 

“I got you, ma'am.” He gets up and pats her shoulder as he leaves the garden sphere, but he never leaves her side. Even when she can't talk about it, he just gets the little cues. Wordlessly, he's there, asking for nothing in return. With his silent support she throws herself headfirst into work again, volunteering for all the dangerous missions she can go on. He comes along each time, determined to keep her alive.

 

She resists shouting at him to let her take the risks she needs to take, but she keeps quiet, too tired. The exhaustion weighs into her bones.

 

She thinks of all she wanted to say to Shepard, all the thousand little things and the one big thing, but she stops trying to put them into words after the first attempt leaves her chest aching. The symbols look so futile on the screen, so pointless because Shepard will never read them anyway.

 

Liara sends her the pictures she requests. The corpse in them is charred, the flesh frost-bitten and melted into the pieces of armor still intact. That's the only way she can tell – the armor. There's a bit of hair peeking out, but the rest horrifies her to look at. She never thanks Liara, but she never deletes the images either. At night, she lies awake and imagines how it must have felt: falling through the atmosphere, feeling the burning heat of entering a planet's orbit, pulled down by its inescapable gravity. How much of the descent did she survive? 

 

Her request to travel to Earth gets delayed and stalled and put through the bureaucratic wringer, both from the Systems Alliance and the Flotilla. Han'Gerrel doesn't want to see her leave, and she accepts like the good quarian she is. She works hard, shutting off her suit radio to cry in the middle of compiling data. No one hears as she chokes on tears and snot, and her eyes ache for months on end.

 

Suddenly a year has passed. Kal'Reegar gets them some time off and takes them to Omega, where they toast to the lost and fallen in a bar that reeks of despair. After two hours there, Tali pushes the glass away and spits out the straw, feeling dizzy and sick to her stomach. She has been drinking so hard her stomach churns and the room spins.

 

Struggling not to throw up as they stumble into a rented room, she vows never to let fear keep her desires in check again.

 

“Do you like me, Reegar?” she slurs, fumbling with the suit mask.

 

“Yes ma'am,” he replies, flopping down on his own mattress.

 

“I mean, like-like.”

 

“I, uh. You're not my type. I like you, sure, as a friend.”

 

Her hands drop. She never had a friend growing up, a true friend who was there for her. She was surrounded by adults feeling guilty and trying to compensate for Rael's neglect and mother's death; by military leaders and brilliant engineering masterminds, but they were too wrapped up in their own egos to engage in others. And here is Kal'Reegar, saying calmly that he is her friend.

 

“Ma'am?” He hesitates. “Tali? Is everything alright?”

 

“Yes.” She smiles. “Thank you for being a friend. I never knew how badly I needed one until this year.”

 

“I'll be here for a long while yet.”

 

 

 

**II.**

 

Time passes. Life almost feels normal again. The jabbing pain comes as night, sharp and unforgiving, but it subsides quicker. The acute sting is gone, the grief lingers on. The motions pass her through the day, inch by inch. She lives, though she barely understands the mechanisms behind it herself.

 

A year later, Kal'Reegar asks her to go with the squad to find Veetor and she knows, from the way Reegar stumbles on the words, she gets it. She touches his hand and then he hugs her, and she tells him she will bring him home safe. As they hold on to each other in the cramped docking bay, she feels that things slow down just a little. That as long as he holds her, she has a friend, a safe harbor to turn to in the stormy expanse of the waterless sea they sail.

 

“Good luck at Freedom's Progress,” he says, giving her a salute.

 

When their shuttle descends they see Veetor running for shelter, and as they start scouring through the eerily empty buildings they are shot at by guardian mechs. Easy enough to disable, but Prazza makes disparaging comments about the nervous wreck they are there to collect. Tali snaps at him to be quiet as she opens a channel of communication, but all frequencies are dead. The only reason she was brought along was because of her extensive 'human diplomatic abilities' as her dossier reads, but there are no humans anywhere.

 

Dinners stand on tables, lights are on, but no one is home. The snow falls, enveloping the colony in a silent shroud that dampens all noise. While Prazza and the others pour over maps to make a viable plan for approaching Veetor, she stands guard by the window. A shuttle lands further away and she feels uneasy. “Cerberus is here,” she says over her shoulder. “Work faster.”

 

They aren't fast enough, and she pulls herself away from the window when the door opens. She came to keep any unnecessary blood from being shed, and she will try even if it seems a futile effort.

 

At first she assumes it's a mistake, humans can look so alike after all, there's bound to be plenty of them that fit the description. Then she hears the voice and she thinks her translator is glitching, looping a ghost fragment stuck in the back of the memory banks. Then she breathes, the haze clears, the guns pointed at her are lowered. 

 

Shepard looks like a chained beast, her upper lip curled and revealing sharp incisors, her teeth a shade of white brighter than Tali remembers. Two humans flank her, Cerberus logos brightly visible on their chests. Despite the rage, just as vivid and terrifying as it was, Shepard keeps her gun holstered.

 

“Shepard? How...”

 

“I'm back,” she says with an exhausted shrug, wincing as her bones creak. “Cerberus rebuilt me.” There's barely any emotion in her voice, just a resignation to some fate Tali can't quite comprehend. They make up a plan on the spot, with the usual ingenuity, and for a brief moment it feels as if the past two years are erased. Then she glances at the yellow logo and the present cannot be ignored.

 

Prazza mutters curses, calling bullshit on everything. He says over and over what she is thinking, that Shepard is dead, yet it is Shepard's distinct voice over the radio. When he thinks they are going too slow he rushes ahead, hoping to get to Veetor before any Cerberus bastards grab him. She tries to talk him down but he's too stubborn to listen. In despair over losing lives pointlessly she contacts Shepard, whose short and clipped sentences offer no comfort.

 

She witnesses the bloodbath from the flimsy safety of a storage unit, fuming over Prazza, fuming over not having enough authority to frighten him into obeying her. The anger continues as she watches Shepard pulling off new biotic tricks with her stiff body. Shepard isn’t meant to be alive. She can’t be. It hurts that she is.

 

No one ever prepared Tali for this. That her brash and head-strong Commander could conquer death. It terrifies her.

 

After she has stabilized one of the last survivors she goes to see Veetor. Shepard is still there, watching the footage looping on the screens of some strange alien that Tali can't place. One corner screen is shattered, the tell-tale slug hole letting her know just what kind of mood Shepard is in. The Cerberus personnel withdraw to the entrance, reluctant, keeping an eye on their possession as Tali draws near.

 

“Veetor needs medical assistance,” Shepard says distractedly, eyes narrowed as she zooms in on the footage. “Some psychiatric too, I think he's been through a bit too much trauma.”

 

“What happened here?”

 

Shepard jabs a finger at the screen. “See those pods? They're filled with the human colonists. These swarm bugs–“ she flicks between the material until they come up, “swept in first and paralyzed them and only them. They didn't seem to even notice Veetor.”

 

“What are they?”

 

“Collectors. According to Cerberus, they have been at it since I died. Remote colonies disappearing one by one, leaving no sign or trace of where they went.”

 

“And you believe in them?”

 

She slumps her head forward, hands clenching into fists. “What else am I to believe?”

 

Tali sees that there is a point to what she is saying. Making sure that no one else is watching them, she touches Shepard's hand, then arm, tracing it up to the hair bun resting on top of her head. She just needs to make sure it's an actual human being standing in front of her, the actual Shepard she once knew intimately. It feels the same, and suddenly the years fall away, two whole years of grief and mourning vanishing when faced with the subject of her sorrows – and then they come crashing right back in.

 

Shepard keeps her eyes closed then sighs. “You doubt I'm real too.”

 

Tali immediately withdraws her hand. “A little,” she confesses. “But you feel real. You feel like you used to. How long have you been alive?”

 

“A couple of hours.” Red bubbles out of one nostril, oozing down her mouth. She is about to say something but stops, touches her face, grunts at the blood covering her glove. “It's not holding together so well.” Her lips move but then she falls silent as the female Cerberus operative appears, applying medi-gel and checking vitals and suit read-outs of Shepard.

 

“We need to get you back to base,” the operative says, ignoring Tali.

 

Shepard presses the back of her hand to her nose, tilting her head back. “I'm sorry.”

 

“Me too,” Tali says, turning away to try and calm Veetor down. She closes her eyes when she hears Shepard's boots scraping the floor, resisting the urge to reach out and hold her there because nothing about it makes sense. People don't die and come back. No one who dies comes alive again. It’s against the laws of the universe.

 

She messages Liara, offering all the credits she has to get some information, anything that offers some insight into what has happened. _Shepard is alive. Or at least a Cerberus copy of her. It has to be her._

 

 _I know_ , is all the response she gets when Liara rejects the credits but forwards what she has. A project named after a human mythological myth two thousand years old that has now produced an actual result. Shepard has risen from the dead.

 

_You knew all along and didn't tell me?_

 

_It was complicated. It still is. Tali, I can't discuss this on an unsecure channel._

 

_You knew and you didn't tell me._

 

She puts her fist through the screen and it shorts out. Before anyone can lecture her on needless destruction she starts pulling cables and repairing the broken screen, but the cracks are still clearly visible when she is done.

 

 

 

**III.**

 

Pretending nothing is wrong isn't her strong suit, but at least father doesn't notice her quiet confusion. Han'Gerrel isn't as dense as Rael. He tries to talk to her, even digs around a bit, but she says it's nothing. The news breaks soon enough on the Flotilla, but where they once wished to talk to Shepard regarding geth combat engagements they now list her as a Cerberus associate to be avoided.

 

Tali reads the updated security bulletin, listens to the discussions, and sighs. Shepard’s alive, and Shepard is now a number one threat to the Flotilla. She tries to make sense of it, but…

 

Meanwhile, Veetor pushes Kal away, too horrified by guilt and pilgrimage failure to even see the one he loves. Kal tries not to take it personally – the doctor says it'll get better with some time – but Tali can see it weighing on him. They both find escape within duty, within the dangerous missions they bonded over, driven to it by frustration and inability to cope like regular people. Life is horrible, but they excel at assignments no one else wants to go on willingly.

 

It doesn't make either of them feel better though.

 

Tali still defends Shepard in conversations with her father, despite her own hesitations. A subtle change happens within her. Slowly, she changes the way she thinks, from: _I wish Shepard had been alive to see this_ , to _I wish she was here to see this_. The resentment lingers on, messy and horrible, a darkness constricting in her throat and choking off all air. She resents Cerberus for being the ones to bring her back, and she resents Shepard for dying, however childish it is. There is nothing else to cling to, plunged back into the wild whirlpool of the past two years.

 

She thinks she'll settle into being an old, angry tech engineer, even begins to embrace the idea, when a mission deep into geth space turns her expectations on the future right around.

 

 

 

**IV.**

 

They move in the long shadows on Haestrom, the geometrical architecture kept intact for three hundred years. A light cover of dust hangs in the air from the slow erosion of time, but everything else is pristine, even repaired and maintained. Just that there are no signs of the quarians that lived in the vast halls, no furniture or corpse remains, nothing. The quarian presence has been wiped away, leaving only empty structures and a dying sun. For days on end they listen carefully as they push deeper into the ruins, flinching at each scrape of metal against stone.

 

“What do you think, ma'am?” Kal'Reegar asks via suit radio as they set up another observation station. “How long 'til we see some geth?”

 

“Hopefully we can avoid them,” she replies dryly.

 

Two hours later the first drop-ship sweeps in over them and the terror bursts through the radio communications. She and Kal's squad makes a dash towards the central observatory to secure the information they have been tasked to collect 'at all costs', but as the deaths trickle in she starts to wonder if this was the cost they had in mind. Equipment might be hard to replace, a lost shuttle even harder, information is paramount to the Flotilla's survival – but _lives_ … Actual quarian lives, snuffed out for some elusive purpose of tracking the strange developments of a star.

 

She hears the pulse rounds outside, the units dropping in from the sky. Kal'Reegar forces her into the observatory, missile launcher strapped to his back and a shotgun in hand. He salutes. “Hope to see you on the other side of this,” and forces a hard lockdown of the blast doors. She berates him over the radio, but he tells her he knows what they signed up for, and she shouldn't feel bad. Then the geth interfere with their radio.

 

She paces the room, measuring out the space she is certain to die in. The lights flicker above her head, somehow still operational. It strikes her that the geth must be repairing anything that breaks, and the thought causes her to shudder.

 

In a desperate attempt, she tries to see if base camp is still holding up. Bypassing the geth interference is tricky, but there are frequencies even they cannot block anymore, quarian counter-geth technology having developed leaps and bounds with the information she brought back from her pilgrimage and the advances her father have made. 

 

Sometimes when he is in a good mood, he thinks that the two of them, father and daughter, will be the crucial element to tip the scales. That they will be hailed as saviors of the quarian people when they are instrumental in the re-taking of Rannoch. She's less hopeful than he is, but she agrees politely. He expresses his affection in terrible ways, pushing his own dreams onto her. She tries to see the love in what he does, but it is hard.

 

That her supposed last moments of life are spent thinking of her father saddens her, and she tries to hail base camp one last time. The holographic display instead shows Shepard, and she can't stop the surprised relief in her voice. “What are you even doing here?”

 

“Oh, you know,” Shepard grins, slightly deranged as she can be when high on adrenaline, the sight of it setting off pangs of nostalgia in Tali, “travelling around, seeing the joys of geth space, thought I might drop by to see how you're doing. Figured I could lend a hand.”

 

She folds her arms and can't help the little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Really though.”

 

“Came to see if you were interested in joining my mission.”

 

“We can discuss that once we get out of here alive.”

 

“Then I better get moving.” She winks.

 

She holds out, and hears the explosions outside, the noises of unleashed biotics, and she knows she'll make it. When she reads no more geth in the immediate area she unlocks the door with trembling hands and begins compiling the information onto back-ups; behind her Shepard is moving around, her heavy boots scraping against the stone.

 

“This was such a doomed mission,” Tali says with a shake of her head. “All for some data.”

 

“It could be crucial,” Shepard offers.

 

“The cost, though. It hardly seems fair.”

 

“Yeah, these kind of things never are.”

 

She turns. Shepard smiles, one hand massaging her neck – scars criss-cross her face, but not the ones Tali got used and attached to. There’s a tug, familiar, but the years hold her back. Tali isn’t even sure who she’s looking at anymore, her old Commander or a new one, a reconstructed copy of the body she used to touch. And yet, she can’t say no to that stupid cocky grin and the smooth voice.

 

Kal'Reegar limps in, holding his side and with the kind of strained tension in his voice of a man in need of some medical assistance. She hands him the information and wipes the terminal. “Take this back to the Flotilla. I'm leaving here with Shepard.”

 

“By your own free will?” he asks, cautious of the Cerberus associates hanging around the entrance to the room.

 

“Yes,” Tali reassures him, then she turns to Shepard. “I should have joined you the moment I saw you, but... I couldn't.”

 

“I'm not blaming you. Things are different. You're not going to like all the changes.”

 

As Shepard goes to call down the shuttle, Kal sits down with Tali. “That's her?” he asks, wincing as he breathes in too deep.

 

“Yes,” Tali says in a soft whisper.

 

“She's better than you said. Damn fine soldier. You'll be in good hands.”

 

“It's usually her in mine,” she says without thought, and then laughs a little. It feels like forever since she laughed without forcing it.

 

 

 

**V.**

 

Shepard told the truth though. The Normandy is not like she remembers it. Where the SR-1 felt big and empty, the feeling deepens on the second version. Everywhere she turns she sees the Cerberus logo, embossed on the soft towels and embroidered into the bedsheets. She is painfully aware of how the AI and cameras record each movement she makes, and she resists the urge to reply to any messages sent to her from the Flotilla.

 

There are some familiarities even though they are changed as well. Garrus wears his facial scar like a badge of honor, sometimes picking at the tissue when he thinks no one is looking. Joker cracks terrible jokes on the intercom and she has learnt that she does not need to laugh at him; he will still say he appreciates his engine room good-luck charm.

 

Shepard is the most outstanding difference. She is alive again, risen from the grave with the help of cybernetic implants that glow where scar tissue forms, bright red shining through. There is no gap between her front teeth, and she smiles less. The hair doesn't curl the way it used to when she sweats and she rolls her shoulders often, sighing deeply as the bones crack. Most of all, the scar cutting through her eyebrow is gone, and Tali finds herself missing it. And…. She misses Shepard looking at her the way she used to. They barely talk, keeping to their separate floors and daily rhythms.

 

When Shepard leaves on a mission, Tali goes to the window overseeing the shuttle bay to see as she departs. She is still every bit the Commander Tali remembers, just... Distant. Cold. She knows that the Shepard she knew is there, just a bit further away. Only when Shepard tumbles out of the shuttle, high on adrenaline and with new scrapes on her suit and bruises on her body, can Tali recognize the old person she used to know.

 

Then, two weeks after she first joined the Normandy crew, Shepard suddenly sits down at the mess hall table. “I got a message from your father,” she begins. “Well, technically, he sent it when you transferred here, I just forget to check my inbox. He trusts me to keep you safe. Seems like an amicable man.”

 

“The transmission he sent me went a bit differently,” Tali replies, more curt than she wants to sound. 

 

“You two not getting along well?”

 

“He's not exactly keen on my decision to be on a Cerberus vessel, no. I am here for you, Shepard, but they...” She motions with her hand in the air. “They are an enemy of my people. He had to placate the Admiralty Board with assurances that I wouldn’t betray any vital information that could compromise the fleet.”

 

“I see.”

 

Tali can't hide her annoyance anymore. “Is that how you are going to start this conversation? Talking about my father? Two years, and this is how we start again?”

 

Shepard reclines in the seat, body languid. “I died. To me, those two years are just... Darkness.”

 

“You died. I spent two years trying to adjust to that, to accepting that you were the past and I was the present. That there would never be a future with you.”

 

“From what I recall, we didn't make any promises about the future.”

 

“It was the hope, the idea, the...” Tali looks away. “The suggestion of something more that remained unfulfilled.”

 

“I know.” Shepard's words surprise her. “I wanted more too. Do you... Do you think you still want it?”

 

“It's been two years. To me, you were dead. Somedays I think this is all a terrible dream that I will soon wake up from, that as soon as I...” She reaches a hand out to Shepard, touching the hand on the table's surface. “I am waiting for this to dissolve because I don't believe it's real.”

 

“To me, we broke it off a couple of weeks ago. Yet here you are, obviously older and smarter, and I'm still just the dumb soldier of twenty-nine.” She moves her hand away from Tali, rubbing at her face with an exasperated groan. “Do you want some time? Do you think that'll make some difference?”

 

“Time doesn't heal everything.”

 

“I want to try, at least. I'm confused about a lot of things, but I still think about you more than I would if I just wanted you to be my friend.”

 

“Let's try, then.” The conversation trickles out to nothing and Tali doesn't know how she feels about it. The promise seems doomed in its intentions, and there's barely any hope in their voices, so many unspoken little terms and conditions lining their words.

 

The fact remains that Tali finds it jarring to watch Shepard coping with her own newfound life. She gets distracted by the apparent dissonance between who she is and what she is capable of, but then she'll suddenly put her fist through a surface where normal beings would shatter their bones. The alarms often go off, her combat suit program trying to compensate for the dangerous way in which Shepard pushes herself. At one point, Tali overhears Miranda chastising Shepard, hearing disconnected sentences such as ' _no nervous system can stand up to this treatment for long_ ' and ' _your implants can't fix everything_ '. Shepard just grins to the first statement, and shrugs to the second.

 

It's a horrifying spectacle to watch, because it makes Tali's skin crawl for no discernible reason. She assumes it's because she is watching something beyond mere mortality take shape, but then she sees Shepard bleed. She sees Shepard scream in pain as she takes a hit with shields down. It dawns on her that Shepard seeks out battle to feel alive, to feel the pain which confirms that she is human. Denied everything else, she takes the punishment of the flesh to substitute what she lacks.

 

Tali wants, desperately, to make everything better, but she finds herself restrained by the same concerns that kept her from coming along immediately on Freedom's Progress. A slight nagging concern, a worry at the back of her head, keeping her in check. She hates it as much as she thanks it.

 

 

 

**VII.**

 

The communications from the Flotilla ceases. She guesses that Kal'Reegar is on recon missions, and that Veetor is too exhausted by therapy to let her know how he is doing. Father only sent one message and since then he's been silent. Then, out of nowhere, as she wanders around engineering waiting for a diagnostic scan to run through to the end, a message alert pops up. 

 

Suddenly nothing really matters anymore.

 

“EDI,” she says out loud, the first time she addresses the AI directly. “Let Shepard know I wish to see her.”

 

“Acknowledged. Request left with Yeoman Chambers.” The voice holds no hostility nor any softness. “Was there anything else?”

 

“That's all.” Tali leaves the Cerberus engineers to fix the rest as she tries to find somewhere to withdraw, but every empty space on the ship is staked out by someone else. For the first time, she can't find the loneliness she suddenly craves on the Normandy, and stands in a corridor between rooms, drumming her fingers against her hips, trying to keep the panic in check.

 

Treason is a word that frightens her, has done so since the day she understood why Shala'Raan mourned her lost son. Tali just doesn't want to die to redeem herself. She has done nothing wrong, just obeyed admiral's orders.

 

Shepard finds her just as Tali's resolve takes shape, and she pleads with Shepard to take her somewhere she can catch a shuttle ride back to the Flotilla. She has to defend herself, has to make them understand. Most of all, she herself wants to understand why father has even allowed the charge to be raised. She obeyed him. She did the role he asked of her. Why this? Why now?

 

Shepard asks her for the coordinates, and the Normandy is on course within an hour. 

 

It is not the ideal conditions Tali imagined Shepard seeing the Flotilla – her home – in, and the once comforting familiarity of the Rayya seems far more ominous with the whispers spoken. She prepares herself in the short walk from the docking area to the plaza, weighing the options and arguments, though the accusation that she brought active geth into the fleet is hard to counter. It was a secret kept between father and daughter, she being the prime source of subjects for his experiment.

 

The harsh truth unfolds itself, piece by piece, until she finds his body on the floor and can't contain it anymore. As she kneels by his side, grasping at his hands, she feels everything fall away. He can't be dead. He's too smart, too amazing, he was always the childhood hero to Tali, no matter how faraway he was, he still did amazing things.

 

Why does death take him? Why does it spit Shepard back out? She clenches her fingers around his wrist. Why can’t she stop it from happening, over and over?

 

The suit shows no sign of life, no back-up system except a message left to her. An order about his legacy, for her to fulfill his plans and bring her a homeworld. “I didn't want that!” she bursts out in a choked sob, angry at the holographic figure of her father flickering in front of her eyes. “I wanted a father!”

 

Shepard touches her shoulder. “Tali...”

 

“Damn it!”

 

Shepard pulls her off the floor and into a hug. Their suits press against each other, the hard plate on Shepard's chest rubbing against Tali's own soft and flexible one, but it still feels warm. It still feels a little bit better to have Shepard's face pressed to hers, the arms wrapped tightly around her as Shepard whispers gentle words.

 

It helps enough so that she can push through to the final end – and Shepard has to pull her away from kicking the shattered geth shells at one point – but then as they leave she comes apart again.

 

Rael'Zorah – _father_ , she corrects herself, _father_ – left no message but an order. She turns off her suit radio to cry in peace but then Shepard nudges her in the shuttle as Garrus turns his back on them, trying to offer what privacy he can. Tali wraps her arms around Shepard's neck and they hug again as she sobs, her chest shaking. It's humiliating and humbling, but she lets go as everything has let go of her, and she takes comfort in the way Shepard holds her.

 

“I'll try to make things better,” Shepard whispers, holding her hand as they hurry back to the plaza where Zaal'Koris is arguing to declare their mission a failure. Just as the doors open she lets go and storms in, the power in her voice silencing even Han'Gerrel and making Daro'Xen's proud pose sag. She points out the flaws, the political motivations, her keen eye and sharp tongue slicing through any veneer of justice they have tried to maintain. Shepard berates them with such fervor that they drop the treason charges immediately, and Tali reels a little.

 

They stay in the plaza for a while, Shepard wandering around to talk to the people there while Tali hangs back. Name cleared and now orphaned, she can look at the Rayya with a new set of eyes. It was home for twenty-two years, but the outcome of the trial pulls a veil from her eyes. When Shepard tells _Tali'Zorah vas Normandy_ to come back home with her, she smiles. The name has a nice sound to it.

 

 

 

**VIII.**

 

At night, sleepless, she takes the elevator up to Shepard's cabin. The door opens to her presence and Shepard, reclined on the bed, lowers the book she is reading. They both hesitate: Tali mindful of what they said earlier, that they were just going to try, the implication that they were going slow, but she wants... She wants this.

 

“I need you tonight.” She puts her fingers at the jaw of her visor, pressing until the lock disengages. “I need us tonight.” 

 

Shepard sits up straight, dropping the book.

 

Tali realizes that Shepard has never seen her face directly and she licks her lips, undoing the clasps at her throat. Piece by piece the suit falls to the floor, the suit she has worn day in and day out for all too long. She can't help but notice the distinct scent of sweat nor the way her suit has left little indentation marks across her hips. She shivers in the cool air of the cabin. Shepard lifts the corner of the blanket – she herself is only wearing panties underneath it – and Tali eases in, the soft texture of the fabric comforting against her skin.

 

They lie like that for a few minutes, thigh to thigh, breast to breast, half a hand's width between their faces. Tali runs her fingers across Shepard's skin, feeling the downy hairs of her legs and the rough ones on the venus mound; she traces the scars and stretch marks, she dips her finger into the navel indentation. She marvels at how warm and soft and utterly alien Shepard feels.

 

“I'm going to get so sick,” she whispers, tangling a hand in Shepard's hair, running the locks between her fingers.

 

“I'll care for you.” Shepard's words are exhaled against Tali's lips.

 

“You better.” She pulls Shepard in for a kiss, their lips overlapping. Shepard's long, sharp nose digs into her cheek so she tilts her head a little to side, opens her mouth and presses her tongue against the smooth lips. They part with a soft moan, Shepard's hands cupping her face to draw her closer. She slides her tongue over the teeth, a strong taste covering them that makes her own mouth feel cold and tingly. They break apart just a little to breathe and the gasps of exhalations tickles Tali, the hot air making her move closer to Shepard.

 

She keeps one hand in the hair, too mesmerized by the texture to let go completely, while the other traces down – past the curve of the earlobe and the sharp jawline, past the delicate neck and collarbones until it rests against Shepard's breast. The heartbeat under her hand is thrumming away, and she smiles but Shepard whimpers and pulls back from the kiss.

 

“You have such sharp teeth,” she says, licking at the corner of her mouth, her lips a shade darker than normal.

 

“I'll be gentle.”

 

“I don't like it gentle.”

 

They both giggle, the nervousness gone, and Tali pushes her tongue back into Shepard's mouth as she cups a breast, running one finger over the nipple until it hardens. Then she takes it between two fingers, sliding the digits along the sides and planting one simple kiss to the swollen lips before trailing her mouth down. She nibbles a little on the flesh, leaving bite-marks that she licks afterwards, but when she comes to the collarbones she has to sink her teeth into them. Shepard tenses and then shudders as Tali lets go, the breathing coming in the tell-tale shaky bursts Tali remember so well. She struggles not to cry, not to be overwhelmed by the familiarity of the body she spent so long watching and observing and learning that she is now touching, skin to skin. For a while she just presses her face to Shepard's throat, drawing in the scent. It's so intense without any filters in the way, just the purity of the recycled air and the smell of human skin. Of Shepard.

 

Shepard strokes the back of her head, catching her fingers on the texture of Tali's tightly braided hair. “I win that bet. Ash said you'd be practical and shave it all off.”

 

“We all have our vain vanities.” Tali marvels at the taste of Shepard's skin, the salt and sweat, the tinge of something artificial lingering on top. Nudging her nose against the breast she rolls them over, pinning Shepard's arms as she bends down and licks along the veins along the breasts. The nipples pucker and she teases, little flicks of the tongue before she sucks them into her mouth, careful not to cut them on her teeth.

 

From the way Shepard is moaning and cradling her head, the stomach under Tali's hips tensing and just brushing her own labia, Tali feels reluctant to move on. It's so delicately delicious to stay in that precise moment, stringing it out, the anticipation thrilling because the endless possibilities ahead of them are just a vague yearning in her gut. Teasing in and of itself, the careful act of foreplay, of almost but not quite, is enhanced a thousandfold by the contact of skin to skin. It's like electricity, sparks jumping between them, both of them close to overloading at each stroke of a hand, circle of a finger pad.

 

She shifts down, almost reluctantly, but then changes her mind and positions herself over Shepard's face. Barely has she made herself comfortable than Shepard grabs her hips, sinking her nails into the skin and tongue plunging deep inside. Tali stiffens up and then lets out a sigh, then a moan, her hands idly playing with Shepard's breasts as she is in awe over exactly how good it feels.

 

She hisses, rolling off. ”Your turn.” 

 

Picking together her shattered mind she moves down, nosing the pubic hair, before Shepard spreads her legs wide apart and it's Tali's turn to hold on to the hips. Pushing the labia apart with her tongue she licks the clit, circling around slowly before gently taking it between her lips. Each motion she felt Shepard make she can’t help but replicate, driven by the yearning, the electricity of sex driving her onwards.

 

Then Shepard sighs. ”I’m bored. Get back on top of me.”

 

Tali’s initial ”Oh?”, awkwardly positioning herself back above Shepard’s mouth, then turns into an elongated ”oh!” as she momentarily loses focus before finding her way again.

 

To her surprise, she comes first. She thought Shepard's knowledge of Tali's body was in no way comparable to the opposite, but there she is, trembling, shaking, moaning against Shepard's vulva so loudly that Shepard comes too.

 

They only need minutes, precious moments in which they kiss and embrace and laugh, before they start again. Shepard has none of the equipment they had, all destroyed with the original Normandy, and the thought makes Tali press herself closer. “I lost you.”

 

“I came back.”

 

“It still hurts at times.”

 

“So it does.”

 

Then she slides her fingers into Shepard and disperse the immediate sadness, but the grief remains in both of them. Sometimes they cry after an orgasm, sobbing shamelessly, all their walls crumbling in the mess of stained sheets and wet fingers. 

 

In the tangle of limbs and senses, Tali closes her eyes for what she thinks is a second and wakes up with a pounding head and dripping with sweat. The fever is in control of her limbs and she stumbles up to get the suit and get into it, but her head spins and everything sticks. Shepard wakes up to her cursing, and gets up to help. For the first time in her life, Tali feels she is being isolated within her suit, cut off from everything, and she is delirious with rage and sickness. Once the helmet is put in place the suit program boots up and floods her with antibiotics, seeking to combat the infection.

 

Shepard changes the sheets in the bed, something that to Tali seems to take forever as she shakes on the couch. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep, she should have gotten up and put the suit on, her everything is in uproar and she feels like a trembling mess. When the bed is made, she crawls into it instantly, pulling the heavy blankets over herself and curling into them.

 

Tali is only vaguely aware of time as it passes, but she notices the small changes in Shepard each time she comes to. A different outfit, a different way she has her hair done.

 

When the fever breaks, she sees the nutrient paste tubes on the bedside table. Hunger knowing no limits, she eats greedily, her entire body feeling hopelessly light. She barely has the strength to lift her head when Shepard comes in, but she croaks out a greeting. Her voice is hoarse and faint, but Shepard lights up instantly.

 

“Welcome back,” she says, shedding her armor.

 

“It hurts to speak.” Tali wants to return the kiss Shepard presses to her visor, but instead she just squeezes the back of her neck, strokes the damp curls there. “I feel dead, but... It was worth it.”

 

 

 

**IX.**

 

In the days she has been sick, much has happened. They have docked at the Nos Astra spaceport, and acquired two new crewmembers: a drell assassin and asari justicar. They keep to themselves, courteous but distant, but what surprises Tali the most is how calm Miranda appears. They are still subtly hostile to each other, but Miranda no longer hangs over her with the sneer she used to. Jack calls it 'a fucking miracle', and Tali is inclined to agree.

 

She feels too weak to do more than go about her duties on the ship, but she does take a walk with Shepard one late night. The skyline is a marvel, one few quarians get to see: she is painfully aware that most of her kin is relegated to the lower levels where the sky is blotted out by the high-rises and cars. 

 

Brimming over with frustration, she presses Shepard up against the wall in an alley, dipping her hand into Shepard's pants and working her fingers to make Shepard sing. She uses her other arm to push down on Shepard's throat, then pulls at the clothes and rips the neckline. It amuses her, but out of sight and sound of Cerberus she feels them slip into their old places. She demands, she conquers; Shepard obeys and is conquered. It’s sexual. It’s raw. It’s need.

 

“I wish I could kiss you right here,” Tali whispers as she wipes her hand on Shepard’s pants.

 

“Such a sad thought.” Shepard is trying to patch together her torn top when the omni-tool beeps with a high priority communication from the Illusive Man. She stares at it for a while, then sighs. ”I wish I could run away with you.”

 

”But you won’t.”

 

”Are you sure?”

 

”You’re Shepard. You wouldn’t be able to turn your back on the galaxy.”

 

She grunts. ”It’s tempting though.”

 

 

 

 

**X.**

 

Tali waits in the captain's cabin for Shepard. Her fingers still ache, her suit program still jitters with the aftershocks of the system-wide overload of the Normandy. A surge of light and then utter darkness – even in her own suit. A brief second that expanded, a static glimmer and a shrill noise of a figure that almost was a Collector but most certainly not one like the ones on Freedom's Progress.  Fear settled into the darkness, the horrible creeping realization that she herself never fought a single Collector yet, before the automatic power reserves came online and she rushed to restore full functionality, distracted by the necessity of work.

 

She feels feverish again, adjusts the parameters for the liquid medication, waits for the effect.

 

What does she really know? How to make an engine sing, how to rig an explosive to detonate according to necessary specifications, how to aim her shotgun so that it ensures an instantaneous kill. She knows next to nothing about Collectors, about what they are trying to do – even as she goes through the information Shepard, Miranda and Mordin gleamed as they walked through the massive cruiser, she sees only further questions. To what purpose are they gathering humans? Why are they throwing out some humans from this purpose, dumping them in piles, discarded like broken cogs? How is this related to Reapers?

 

She trusts in the certainty of Shepard – that the connections _are_ there, even she can sense it – but what she doubts is figuring it out. All it does is make her skin crawl.

 

A scream, a fist meeting hard metal, then the door opens. The anger washes off Shepard as she enters, a noticeable decline in rage as the underlying state reveals itself: exhaustion. Suddenly she looks older, heavier, and she slumps down on the couch. “He knew.” Shepard cradles her forehead. “He set us up, he knew it all, it was a trap.”

 

“Cerberus were bound to betray your trust.”

 

“But that's it, Tali. I never trusted him. You can't trust a man who won't meet you face-to-face, who'll take the risk of death.” She opens her hands and closes the fists in the air. “I want to fucking strangle him.”

 

“You will, when the time comes.”

 

“After a mission bound to end up with some of us dead.”

 

“We have you leading us. There is no one else who could do it.”

 

Shepard shakes her head as she pulls out the pins keeping her hair up. Then she falls quiet, staring up at the ceiling window as they pass into the Omega system. Outside, they see the Omega-4 relay, it's ominous presence the question and solution to the Collectors. The weight of destiny, of ultimate fate, hangs in the air.

 

“I'm sorry,” Tali says. “That I doubted you.”

 

“You had every right to.” Shepard is tired, her body slouching as she draws circles on the table with her finger. “I doubt myself too.”

 

“You shouldn't.” She kneels in front of Shepard, cupping her face. “Whatever I thought before, it means nothing now. You are alive, here, with me. You are nothing short of a miracle, and if you can triumph over death, you'll find a way out of this situation too.”

 

“The first time I died, I thought 'well this sucks'. Now when I stare death in the face I just think 'not again'. As if I have a third chance at life out there.” She puts her arms around Tali, pulling her up to sit on her lap. Burying her head between Tali's breasts, they remain so for a long time – Shepard's thumbs working up and down Tali's back, easing knots along the spine; Tali running her fingers through Shepard's hair, brushing out the tangles best she can.

 

 

 

**XI.**

 

It’s the same and it isn’t. Shepard has inevitably changed.

 

”The Illusive Man wanted me brought back exactly as I was, nothing altered,” Shepard says as she runs the razor close to her scalp. ”He can go fuck himself.” The long hair falls onto the floor, into the sink, and Tali picks up a lock, twirling it between her fingers.

 

”I’ll miss touching it.”

 

Shepard takes her hand and puts it on the shaved side of her head. ”You’ll like how this feels too.”

 

And she does.

 

It’s just that she sometimes looks at Shepard and feels unsure. She wakes up in the middle of the night and, rising from the bed, goes through the massive cabin. She sits in the couch, tidies up the desk, feeds the fish, all the while with Shepard sleeping, the scars of her body revealed. Sometimes the red cybernetics look like blood.

 

Trying to put a finger on what it is, Tali loses sleep and distance. She stays close, grows attached, and she knows at some point this will hurt even worse. They never speak of it, of course – it’s taboo – but Shepard died once, and the way she positively burns… Tali has seen that before. The spark is so recognizable that even Han’Gerrel sends her a warning a week after the sham trial. Not that he needs to, he was the one who in her youth sat down and pointed out how to tell a good soldier from one who’d eventually ruin you, and how often they intersected.

 

Tali looks at Shepard and sometimes, she sees the woman who gave her something of her own. Sometimes, her chest aches. It’s not that she worries – that’d be wasted effort on Shepard – but that the shadow of death hangs over Shepard, and she can’t tell if it’s because she’s emerging reborn from it, or because it’ll always be there, waiting.

 

Shepard is different. But so is Tali.

 

They never fit together like perfect puzzle pieces, anyway. They’re jagged and mismatched and she likes having to stand on her toes to take Shepard from behind with a strap-on. She likes that neither of them knows what the hell they’re doing. It makes her feel less lost.

 

 

 

**XII.**

 

”Why are you taking it with us?” Tali shouts over the suit radio as they run – as fast as they can with the gravity giving up on them – carrying the deactivated geth. ”Do you have any idea what it can do?”

 

”It said my name, Tali!” Shepard replies as they throw themselves over the edge, floating towards the airlock of the Normandy. Landing, the Normandy’s gravity kicks in and they all collapse on the floor in a pile. 

 

Miranda is the first to get up, removing the mask and shaking out her hair as she glares at Tali. ”Cerberus values technology like this. The bounty could help considerably.”

 

”It’s a geth! You saw what happened on the Alarei!”

 

Shepard raises her hand. ”I get it, Tali, I do. But this is my choice.”

 

”You’re going to regret it,” Tali says.

 

She keeps an eye on the geth, suspicious of each movement it makes. It’s not threatening, but she doesn’t trust it. It’s a quarian thing, deeply rooted in her perception of the galaxy, and to even be on the same ship as one of them makes her nerves jitter.

 

She stares at it and maybe it stares back, it’s hard to tell. They never address each other directly. She does the absolute minimum to keep it alive as they traverse the Heretic station, but even that feels like too much. Work together as a team, sure, she can fake that. Trusting it? That’s a far more difficult thing to swallow.

 

Once back on the Normandy, she finds it poking around in her homebound transmissions. Rage blinds her, and she marches straight to the core, fully intent on putting a round right in its optics when Shepard interferes. Tali has never been on the receiving end of a shout-down from Shepard before in life, but suddenly she understands why people become so pliable: the sheer might threatening to be unleashed makes her shrink back.

 

Though she makes it up – information for information, giving and taking, withholding and turning away with a tentative hand-shake to mark their co-operation – Shepard immediately corners her by the elevator. ”What were you thinking?” she hisses, leaning close.

 

”I wanted to protect my people! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same!”

 

”Tali, you pulled a gun in the AI core! Do you even comprehend the risk you put us all in?”

 

”And you intervened! Nothing happened!”

 

Shepard gives her a glare that makes Tali feel deflated, but she stands her ground. ”I did what I felt was right.”

 

”Yeah. Congratulations.” She shakes her head. ”Don’t bother coming tonight.”

 

”I wasn’t planning to.”

 

 

 

**XIII.**

 

They don’t speak for days. Tali keeps to her end of the ship, Shepard to hers – their paths only cross when they all cram into the shuttle for a skeleton crew run once EDI finishes processing the Reaper IFF, and even then they manage to avoid as much as looking at the other. Not that it’s hard to hide behind the mask.

 

She idles around the shuttle, ignoring the testy-ness of the others, ignoring the frustration she herself feels. Trying to keep her mind blank is an art, one she learnt out of necessity to her own performance. There’s always a ton of things to distract her, but blocking them out, to achieve the state of a blank slate, that’s pure heaven. It’d be easier if she had something to shoot, but she takes what she can.

 

At her side, Garrus is playing a vid game while Miranda tries to engage Samara in polite conversation. She leans back, closes her eyes, and lets the harsh sun above them wash away her concerns.

 

It’s hard – she wants to think about Shepard, about why they’re not talking, about how neither of them seems able to back down – but she pushes and pulls, and for a while, she achieves it – the perfectly empty mind. A temporary bliss. 

 

Of course, it comes crashing down hard when they return to the Normandy. She doesn’t know how to react, but she walks the spaces, touching the surfaces. The ship is oddly bereft of everything, and it unnerves her to be down in the engineering room, the loneliness so misplaced. She touches the surfaces, she adjusts the algorithms. Then she gives up, because it’s all a poor attempt at pretense.

 

On her way up, she hears Shepard give the order to head for the Omega-4 relay, and when the elevator doors open to the CIC Shepard hesitates as she sees Tali, but steps inside nonetheless. When the doors shut, she slumps back against the wall, sliding down onto the floor.

 

”Tali,” she says, rubbing at her temples, ”I’m not in a mood to fight.”

 

”Neither am I. Shepard, I’m sorry.”

 

She nods, the elevator taking its time inching upwards. ”It’s awfully quiet, isn’t it?”

 

”It’s empty.”

 

”Yes. That’s it.”

 

When the elevator reaches the captain’s cabin, Tali pulls Shepard up to her feet. Without a word she pushes Shepard into the small bathroom, unbuttoning Shepard’s pants as she tugs them off. Throwing them into a corner she hits the hot water and as it cascades down on them both, she undresses too. Half-naked and wet, they make sounds that are immediately drowned out by the falling water. They scratch and bite, Shepard pulling at Tali’s braids, Tali’s fingers digging into Shepard’s curves. It’s not anger and it’s not fear and it’s nothing at all, just them doing what they do best.

 

They’re just two stubborn-headed shotgun-toting bosh’tets, in a way. And they’re so much more.

 

Tali drags Shepard into bed, who slumps onto it, her knees still weak and small shivers passing through her body, making her limbs twitch involuntarily. Settling down between the strong thighs, she works her fingers and tongue until she has Shepard gasping and tugging at the sheets. And then again, their vulvas against one another, riding as she holds on to Shepard’s extended leg.

 

Neither of them can sleep, so they just fuck, again and again, without pause or patience. Four hours pass so quickly when sticky with sweat and entire body fucked raw.

 

 

 

**XIV.**

 

”This is it,” Shepard says, sitting on the conference table as they study the vent schematics again. Everyone else is already moving down to the cargo bay. ”Are you sure?”

 

”I’ll survive.”

 

Shepard opens her mouth, about to say something, and Tali puts a hand over it, shaking her head. ”No. You don’t get a say in this. You died on me, remember? I’m making this choice. If I die today, I’ll do it without any regrets, without any anger. Shepard, I’m willing to lay down my life for you.”

 

”I love you too.”

 

”Dammit.” Tali punches Shepard’s shoulder, a bit harder than she meant to. ”You’re the worst.”

 

”I know.” Shepard presses a kiss to the jaw of Tali’s mask, at the point where her sensors can’t feel a thing.

 

”Kiss me here,” she says, tapping at her neck, and Shepard obliges. ”And don’t you dare die, because I fully intend to kiss you back once this is over.”

 

”I look forward to it.”

 

And Tali looks at Shepard’s cock-sure grin and she feels no fear, nothing but utter confidence.

 

 

 

**XV.**

 

She thinks something is broken. Rolling over, she checks her jaw, poking at her teeth, and then Shepard holds out a bowl.

 

”Spit it out.”

 

One half of a tooth falls out, alongside some blood. Shepard glances down at it then spits out one shattered tooth too, passing a glass of water to Tali.

 

”Lucky we didn’t break anything worse,” she mutters after swallowing the icy liquid.

 

”I think I’ve sprained something.” Shepard moves her arms, then groans into the pillow. ”I just don’t care.”

 

Tali laughs, but her jaw hurts. She’s never felt so battered and bruised and sick before in her entire life, but it matters so little in comparison to the utter _relief_ that washes over her. They did it, and she’s ecstatic, delirious – and she keeps touching Shepard then herself, marveling at how they’re both alive and that the abomination of a station is shattered into a million little pieces.

 

And Shepard just smiles blissfully, her swollen lower lip lacerated with small cuts and she doesn’t care, she twists on the bed and sighs, giggles, childishly happy too. ”What now?” Shepard asks, sprawled on the bed, the gruesome scar running down her back still gleaming fresh. ”What do you want?”

 

Tali doesn’t hesitate. ”You.”

 

”We have obligations, though.”

 

”I don’t care.” Tali straddles Shepard’s back, running her hands along the spine, fanning out at the tense muscles that she kneads with her tired fingers.

 

”Our obligations do.”

 

”Didn’t you hear me? I don’t care.” Leaning back, she dips a hand down between Shepard’s legs. ”And I can make you not care, either.” With a movement of her knuckle, she has Shepard bucking underneath her. Sliding the other hand around under Shepard’s chin, she feels the rumble of the moans in the throat.

 

”You still owe me that kiss.”

 

”I fully intend on repaying.”

 

Shepard bucks again, this time managing to throw Tali off and quickly pounces on her, rolling them around in bed so that they’re face to face, Tali on top. ”So kiss me,” she says, wiggling underneath Tali, one eyebrow raised as she waits.

 

Tali cups her face, thumbs dragging over the lips. ”I have such a bosh’tet captain,” but she kisses Shepard gently, softly, dragging it out until they’re both breathless, and then she does it all over again.

 

”Wherever this war takes you,” Tali says, ”know that I’m here for it, and beyond.”

 

”Just kiss me again,” Shepard begs, brow furrowed, a shadow passing across her face, and Tali complies, trying her hardest to chase that darkness away.


End file.
